I Know I Am, But What Are You?

Starred review from June 28, 2010
Daily Show senior correspondent Samantha Bee offers colorful (and off-color) anecdotes from a childhood lived (at various points) with her bohemian mother, orderly father and stepmother, and devout Catholic grandmother. She also describes misadventures during vacation; a short-lived career in children's entertainment; her dislike of her tiny, rapidly aging hands; as well as the inexplicably numerous encounters she's had with strange men who expose themselves. Both the text and the dry, matter-of-fact narration are consistently sympathetic and engaging, and Bee's imitation of her 13-year-old self—ending every sentence with that typical rising inflection—is absolutely hilarious. A Gallery hardcover.

July 5, 2010
A senior correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Toronto-born comedian pokes fun at herself in a witty collection of personal essays. Recalling her upbringing, she lightheartedly and hysterically skewers her parents, stepparents, grandparents, and even the nuns who taught her math, half of whom "looked and smelled like the rejection of life itself." Bee's stepmother took camping "very seriously," and preparing for a trip was "like preparing for the End of Days;" her father, claiming to be thinking up strategies for better fuel efficiency, was really "just reading Penthouse on the toilet." Regarding the nuns at her Catholic school, Bee doesn't hold back: "You could see that they had all their lady parts, but you just knew that once a month they menstruated dust." Bee takes readers from childhood to adolescence and beyond, reminiscing along the way about her first boyfriend, comparing their sexual chemistry to that of a "sea cucumber sits motionless on the cold, dark ocean floor and dreams of dry-humping a nearby scallop." Bee successfully brings her witty, self-deprecating, slightly cynical, and semi-scathing world view from screen to page.